Thursday, March 3, 2016
I'm not one for doing the really cliche touristy stuff, but that's exactly what we did today. With only one day to see Salzburg, we booked a tour to take us to see the sights of The Sound of Music. Honestly, it's something I've wanted to do my whole life - and Adam too, as it's one of our favorite movies. They haven't had a very snowy winter, so of course - it snowed today. It was overcast and we couldn't see the mountains all morning. We were disappointed and kept saying, "We'll just have to come in the summer next time." But it was still totally amazing to see all of the locations and sing the songs as we drove around town and the countryside.
A picture taken from in the moving van... it shows the fountain where they used to bring the royal horses to wash. The kids walk around this fountain in "Do, Re, Mi." You can see a little how it's dug into the mountainside. Just down the street is this building...
This is where the outdoor farewell concert was held , the one before the Von Trapps flee the Germans. The outdoor theater has since been covered. Because it rains so much in Salzburg, it isn't practical to have an open theater. The theater can only be seen now if you go to a concert.
Schloss Leopoldskron - back of Von Trapp house; the lake was more like a large pond hand dug by peasants.
A replica of the gazebo. The original was in the backyard of the above residence, but so many people visited it that it was noisy and disruptive, so it was moved across the pond. But there it was vandalized, so 20th Century Fox build this replica and it was placed on the grounds of Schoss Hellbrunn, a palace of a grand duke back in the day. We sang "Sixteen Going on Seventeen" to Tyson on his birthday a few weeks ago, so it's only appropriate that we got this picture of him here.
This is the tree-lined dirt avenue across from Hellbrunn that Maria walked down, swinging her guitar and singing "I Have Confidence." A little further down the road is the front exterior used for the Von Trapp house. (Their real house is not something that can be viewed by the public and was not used in the movie.) We only caught a glimpse of the front exterior house as the dirt road is not open to tour vans and buses.
The front exterior as we could see it from our van window. (The house interiors were all shot on a soundstage in Hollywood a month or so later.)
The view we had of the lake and mountains in St Gilgan. This is near where Maria sings her opening song, "The Hills are Alive". We just had to imagine that they were.
Also of importance, Mozart's mother was born in St. Gilgan, which is what this plaque tells us if you could actually see it and read German.
The church they used for shooting the wedding scene, which is supposed to be at the Abby. That church wasn't grand enough on the inside, so they used this interior instead. This church is in the lake town of Mondsee.
The aisle Maria walked down in her wedding dress with the long train.
The stairs and alter where they show Captain Von Trapp and Marie getting married.
We ended the tour back in Salzburg at Mirabell Gardens. (Side note: This palace was the residence of a priest where he housed his mistress and their many children. Didn't think priests were supposed to have those...) Here are the stairs where they shot the last lines of "Do, Re, Mi."
Adam is holding his head like Julia Andrews did on her last "Do" of the song. (Too bad the gates were closed, or the rest of could have run up and down the stairs behind him.)
In the gardens looking back at the stairs. Before the stairs is a fountain with a horse in the middle. As a part of "Do, Re, Me" the kids march around the fountain in a circle.
A little further down in the garden is the tunnel they run through. In the scene it is covered in vines. Here, you can barely see it because it is bare.
This is the exterior of the Marionette Theater. This theater is where uncle Max (a made-up character for the movie based loosely on a priest friend of the real captain Von Trapp) would have bought the puppets for the kids. This theater provided the actual puppets and puppeteers for the movie.
The view of Salzburg and the fortress, similar to a view in the movie.
That was the end of our tour. Where we started our tour there had been an outdoor market. We learned later that there is a farmers market there every Thursday, and it's likely that that is where Maria is with the kids when she's juggling tomatoes. I didn't know the market closed at lunchtime, or I would have gotten a picture of it before we left. We didn't see every single location, but we loved what we did see!
We then struck out on our own to discover more of the town. Salzburg is even more famous for being the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. We saw some things important in his younger life.
The birthplace of Mozart.
The Mozart family moved here when Wolfgang was young before leaving to be a musician in the world. This is where his father was still residing when he died.
Cafe Tomaselli is older than Mozart, who used to come here. It continued to be a hang out for artists and is still a place where people come to ponder over cups of coffee.
Cafe interior. We enjoyed a few pastries and 4 very overpriced bottles of water.
Statue of Mozart.
Still on the hunt for Sound of Music sites, we found one of the fountains Marie splashes her hand in before getting on the bus to the Von Trapp house. Tyson actually discovered it. It was covered, we think to protect it, but Tyson peeked inside the slats and saw the horse - you can see it in the movie. Maria also walks through the arches in the background with her bag and guitar.
We took the funicular up to the Hohensalzburg palace fortress where we found spectacular views of Salzburg and the mountains. Thankfully, it cleared up enough that we could finally see the mountains and they were spectacular. We all realized just how much we had missed our mountains. The city of Salzburg is a circle. Towards the center running north/south is the river with the fortress near it on a hill. Old town, the center of Salzburg, is on the east of the hill. To the west are the Untersberg mountains, which divide Austria from Germany (so the Von Trapps couldn't really climb over them to Switzerland. In actuality, they escaped to Italy and then got visas to America. Small detail in the movie world.) To the west of the fortress hill is also the location of the Von Trapp home.
Panorama shot looking out to the west from the fortress hill.
Still looking to the west.
Looking out over Salzburg, the east side of the fortress hill.
The last thing we wanted to find was Nonnberg Abbey. We just had to know where Maria lived as a nun. We knew approximately where it was, but just seemed to be walking around it without getting to it. But we wanted to find it so badly. We were stopped on a corner looking at our map trying to figure out what we were missing, when a sweet lady stopped to ask if she could help us. She was walking back from town and when we told her what we were looking for, she told us to follow her. What we were looking for was on her way. We chatted as we walked until we got to a little alley-looking street. She gave us the directions we would need to take from the alley. We thanked her and walked right to the abbey. Jacob said, "Do you think Heavenly Father sent her as an angel to us so we could find it?" He did!
Walking up towards the abbey - the red tower in the background.
The gate leading into the abbey. You could only go up to the wood doors in the background and see inside the church. This is where the Von Trapp children asked to see Maria and the sisters confess their sin of tampering with the German cars to the Reverend Mother.
About the best shot we could get of the abbey.
The courtyard in front of the church. This is where Maria walks when she firsts leaves the abbey to become a nanny. The Untersberg mountains bidding Maria to come to them to sing are in the background. And maybe that's the tree Maria climbed as a girl to look into the abbey to watch the nuns.
The street the Von Trapps raced down in their car at the end of the movie to escape the Nazis.
Another entrance into the abbey.
The stairs we had passed earlier in trying to find the abbey - and we should have taken them. The abbey is up on a hill just below the fortress.
An example of the beautiful streets of Salzburg.
Once in a while you get to do something on your bucket list. It was one of those days!!!
